Whose Reality
by Mini Reyes
Summary: Post ME3 Liara struggles to deal with what happened to Shepard and constantly fears losing her. Liara woke gently as Shepard rolled into her... Something was wrong. Holding her, kissing her, tearing her clothes off and melding with her... Something was off. Liara is desperate to prove to herself that Shepard is alive, well, and back in her arms but she has trouble accepting it.


Liara woke gently as Shepard rolled into her, her right arm weaving around her left, hugging it to her chest, a leg sliding over her hip and squeezing tightly, another arm thrown just under her breasts, "Shepard?" she whispered.

The Commander didn't respond verbally, pulling on Liara's body and clutching tightly until her head found the asari's shoulder, then she nuzzled there and relaxed her muscles, lying still once more.

Liara turned her head slightly and lifting her right arm she carefully moved the soft tresses of lengthening red hair away from Shepard's face and dropped a kiss on the top of her head. Unable to see her bondmate's face Liara closed her eyes to better focus her senses. Shepard's breaths whooshed warmly across her bare shoulder and down her left breast, her heart beat strongly through her stomach and her thigh where they pressed against her skin and Liara drew comfort from the woman's vital signs. Rhythmic and strong she willed herself to fall asleep with the trance inducing patterns.

It was because of this that she noticed when Shepard's jaw slowly dropped open and the cadence changed. Shepard gasped and her mouth stretched open wide, Liara felt it's movements against her shoulder as it pulled and clicked slightly before almost fully closing again.

 _Just a yawn_. Liara conceded and tried to calm her frantic imagination. _Nothing is going to happen to her, she's safe, alive and well._ But her fears got the better of her as she analysed every miniscule change in Shepard. Her breathing now came in hot little puffs rather than the gentle whooshes she felt previously, breathing through her mouth now instead of her nose, a rattled whimper surprised Liara.

 _A nightmare perhaps._ "Shepard?"

No movement. A nagging sensation that something was wrong crept in.

Just as Liara was considering waking the Commander her breathing started to even out again, it slowed and made a seamless transition back into warm and gentle whooshes, so gentle Liara almost couldn't feel it. She calmed down along with the Commander and tried to fall asleep again, tuning back into Shepard's pulse to lull her into a trance. But it had the opposite effect. Liara discovered that the woman's pulse had dropped from the hard thuds against her hips and side to an undetectable beat from the position they were in. Liara knew that the panic rising within her was unwarranted, an overreaction caused by her intense fear of losing Shepard, so she turned her attention back into the human's breathing pattern; rise and fall, rise and fall, the woman's chest moved as it was supposed to with the expansion of her strong lungs.

Liara drew a shaky breath of her own, releasing it heavily and resigning herself to another sleepless night. She had a hard time accepting what had happened. When no one heard from Shepard they all assumed she was dead and why wouldn't they? She was on the Citadel and all the Mass relay technology had been destroyed when she activated the Crucible. Even if she were alive there was no way she could have made it back to Earth. Well, they had been wrong. Shepard did make it back but Liara could hardly believe it. Seeing Shepard, holding her, kissing her, tearing her clothes off and melding with her, she had been desperate to prove to herself that the human was alive but her mind had trouble accepting it. Something was off.

Trying to shake her anxiety once more she again focused on Shepard, the warm puffs of air she breathed left her skin tingling.

But then with a long sigh, it stopped.

"Shepard?!" Liara forced herself upright and pushed at the Commander's shoulder till she rolled onto her back, "Shepard wake up!" She yelled and then leant down to put her ear to the woman's lips and then her chest.

Nothing.

"EDI!" Liara screamed this time, "SHEPARD ISN'T BREATHING!"

"Attempt CPR. I'll send Doctor Chakwas." The ships AI instructed.

Liara scrambled over Shepard and tumbled off the other side of the bed, pulling her lover to the floor she began compressions, counting and breathing.

Something about the pattern pulled somewhere deep in Liara's mind.

 _One, two, three four…_

"Come on Shepard!" Desperation filled her every word and fuelled her movements, "EDI what's happening to her she was just dreaming and now she won't wake up!"

Liara kept up her efforts as the door swished open and Chakwas came in and overheard Liara's words, "The mind is a powerful thing, dreams can be hyper realistic and in some cases I've even seen a person's mind trap a person in their memories. They can't tell the difference between reality and dream. The Commander is stuck. She believes what she is seeing and feeling in her nightmare is real, so real that her body thinks it's dying."

"She must be dreaming about the war." Liara concluded.

When Chakwas didn't appear beside her or Shepard she looked up in confusion and found that Doctor Chakwas wasn't the doctor standing on the other side of the room at all, it was an asari.

"Who the hell are you?!" Liara asked, unconsciously leaning closer to the Commander's prone form, readying for a fight, "Where's Doctor Chakwas? What is this?!"

"Come on Liara, we've been through this." Two more asari doctors entered the room and moved toward Shepard, one coming either side of Liara.

"I have to save her! We have to bring her back!" Liara yelled when neither of them moved to help Shepard.

The doctors grabbed her arms and Liara immediately struggled against them, "What do you think you are doing?! Don't you know who I am?!" She flared her biotics but they wouldn't obey her, fizzling out instead of firing heated projectiles.

 _What is happening?!_ Panic gripped Liara and she struggled in earnest now against the hands that were wrestling her off the floor and away from Shepard's body.

"Liara-" The doctor tried to speak.

"NO! _NO!_ YOU CAN'T DO _THIS!_ I AM THE SHADOW BROKER! I'LL HAVE YOU KILLED FOR THIS!" Liara twisted and pulled and pushed and kicked, thrashing and throwing her body in any direction to try and escape the iron grips the two asari had on her.

The doctor sighed "Sedate her." She left the room then, shaking her head in dismay.

Liara's body froze momentarily against her will, then she felt a pinch in her neck and the floor rose to meet her. She caught herself on her arms but they fell away to nothing and she rolled onto her back, trying to find the two doctors who had held her. She spotted them as they left her room and caught a glimpse of a long hallway.

 _This is not the Normandy._

"This can't be happening… this can't be happening." She panted, struggling to keep her eyes open she looked towards where Shepard lay, hoping that she could make it to her before she lost consciousness but Shepard was gone.

It didn't add up, how could they have taken her body so quickly? AND without her seeing it? Something was very wrong with this picture.

Everything about it was off but she couldn't put a name to it. Liara tried to focus her foggy brain, tried to make the connections but something somewhere wouldn't let her. It was like she tripped a circuit breaker in her brain that refused to let her find the answer. The room around her was white, not dark and grey like the ship she knew so well. _I don't understand!_ Darkness seeped in around the edges, sapping her strength to figure out the puzzles before her, it was all she could do to stay conscious- and then she couldn't even do that.

Outside, one of the asari doctors moved away from the window in the door and turned to her superior, "THAT'S Liara T'Soni?!"

"Yes Elnora, it is. It's a real shame what's happened to her."

"What DID happen to her Doctor Jelize?"

Doctor Jelize turned away from the window and looked at her latest employee, "You know, the mind is a powerful thing and sometimes when someone is traumatised their brain just can't cope properly. Sometimes it blocks the traumatic event, sometimes it creates a fantasy world." Doctor Jelize looks at the door behind which Liara lay, "Doctor T'Soni has so far been unable to let go of her bondmate and her mind creates full sensory hallucinations in which she still believes Shepard is alive. She can't tell the difference between reality and dream. She believes what she is seeing and feeling is real and when reality tries to breakthrough she becomes hysterical."

"She was confused, but I don't know that I would call her outburst hysterical."

"What you saw today was a mild reaction, usually she is far worse than that."

"How long has she been here?"

"How long ago did the Crucible fire and the Great Commander Shepard die?"

Elnora gasped, "Thirty years?! She's been here for THIRTY YEARS?!" She shook her head, "My god, poor Liara, their bond must have been incredibly strong for it to do this to one of the strongest minds in the galaxy."

Doctor Jelize nodded, "The two were co-dependant on each other, like Yin and Yang one could not exist without the other."

"And there's nothing we can do to help?"

Together they start walking away from the door and down the long row of doors, each holding back a person trapped within themselves. "Short of preventing her from accidentally harming herself in her delusions? No, at this point there is nothing we can do."

"Do you think she'll pull herself out of it?"

Jeliza looked at Elnora with an expression that clearly said she should know the answer to that, "Thirty years. It's highly unlikely. Her mind is effectively holding her prisoner to her dream world. She is stuck, but it can't last forever."

"Why not?"

"Because it's slowly killing her. Her mind keeps forcing her to see Shepard die, no matter what scenario Liara hallucinates, Shepard always dies. It was her strongest fear and her mind is holding her captive in that her nightmare. Each time she sees that it breaks her all over again, never giving her the chance to move on."

"What if she pulls out of it?"

"Then we'll move her to a different room and try to piece together whatever is left of her mind. But IF and UNTIL that day, she stays here under our watch."


End file.
